What is the nature of the good you can do to the laboring man? His mind analyzes you in a flash. If he is influenced by you, you may be sure that it is by something in you that you had not intended to give him. After the man has seen you, he has been moved by you; but how? Consult your own remembrance. What incident of character impressed you most when you were a child? Do you remember any act, any expression or gesture or anecdote or speech, that had a lasting influence upon you? Now I ask you this: Was it done for you? Were you the designed beneficiary of it? Was it not rather the silent part of some one else’s conduct, a thing you were perhaps not meant to see at all? And this was no accident. This is the natural history of influence; it passes unconsciously from life to life. We must take the world as we find it. We must deal with human nature according to the laws of human nature. Our politics are at present so artificial that the average man thinks that the name “politics” prevents the well established and familiar principles of human nature from being operative. But he is wrong. Man has never yet succeeded in inventing any system that could evade them or affect them in the least. All the political organization of reform is already in existence, and needs only strengthening and developing. It is all in use, and every one understands its use and knows its headquarters and its agencies. It is all individual character and courage, and with the growth of character and courage it will become more defined and visible every day. IV LITERATURE There are feelings and views about life, there are conviction and insight, which come from thinking at a high rate of speed, and vanish when the machinery moves slowly and the blood ebbs. The world not only accepts the intensity of the writer, but demands it. Nevertheless, the world has an imperfect knowledge as to where this intensity comes from, how it is produced, or what relation it bears to ugliness and falsehood. “What a pleasure it must be to you,” said Rothschild to Heine, “to be able to turn off those little songs!” In our ordinary moods we regard the conclusions of the poets as both true and untrue,--true to feeling, untrue to fact; true as intimations of the next world or of some lost world; untrue here, because detached from those portions of society that are perennially visible. Most men have a duplicate philosophy which enables them to love the arts and the wit of mankind, at the same time that they conveniently despise them. Life is ugly and necessary; art is beautiful and impossible. “The farther you go from the facts of life, the nearer you get to poetry. The practical problem is to keep them in separate spheres, and to enjoy both.” The hypothesis of a duplicity in the universe explains everything, and staves off all claims and questionings.